Dear Lady Denver

 

So, tell me, Old Friend,

do those thick-fingered surgeons and steel and stone

still build up where your soul was torn down?

Now, hear me out.

I am your native son, and there are precious few of us.

So take some time from your fancy modern gyrations

and listen to one who remembers.

I remember when the Old Prospector was as untouchable as the clouds,

and as curious to a young boy as contrails against a blue sky or

a Colorado winter’s first snowfall.

And now,

the Old Prospector has come down to earth.

He collects pennies at the Towers and

silently stares as he is touched by tourists

and passed by an endless parade of

fume-spewing autos.

I cannot help but think

his shoulders have stooped a bit.

Do you know, Old Girl,

I remember when there was no Zeckendorf

where noontime loafers sank their putts

on fake green grass.

And there was a time—I know you recall it—

when those long-robed,

ponytailed devotees of Hare Krishna

didn’t dance their simple jig

to the tinny sounds of finger cymbals on 16th Street.

Listen, Dear Lady,

do you know there used to be the Windsor

where Hayden Simpson and his friends played Ragtime

in a room where the echoes of your youth

still haunted those elegant high ceilings

and broad hallways?

And there was an opera house called Tabor

that was your pride and joy

‘til the sleazy cinema corrupted its foundation and

brought the bulldozers to rid you of its plight.

Ah…

There is so much to remember, Old Girl,

and there is so much to be sorry for.

All that which used to be

could still be

if only…

If only we had realized what we were losing.

Excuse me, Dear Lady, but the wine is gone.

The music has stopped.

The fire is out.

I feel that I must be going.

But, Dear Friend,

the next time a high-rise rises

  let’s get drunk on the heady wine of our memories,

  to the sweet sounds of Ragtime. 

Nostalgia from the ’60s and ’70s, now that we are in our 60s and 70s. Urban Renewal in Denver was pursued with a vengeance in those days. The most precious structures of our past were torn down to make way for… Well, to make way for inevitable change. We had no collective sense of preservation, of valuing the remnants of who we’d been. Looking at the photos again decades after I’d written those words, I note that even I.M. Pei’s Zeckendorf Plaza (where loafers sank their putts) is now gone, as is Pei, who died in May 2019 at 102. If only we had realized what we were losing.

In order of appearance: 1) Central Denver after Urban Renewal scraping; 2) The Mining Exchange Building demolished in 1963; 3) The Old Prospector who once stood atop the Mining Exchange Building; 4) Brooks Towers which replaced the Mining Exchange Building; 5) Zeckendorf Plaza; 6) The Windsor Hotel; 7) The Tabor Grand Opera House.